WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — Sunbury Press has released David Parmelee’s Miss Feesenschneezen Is Ill, a humorous middle grade novella about an indispensable teacher.

About the Book:When the beloved teacher of a “tough class” is out sick for a week, everyone must endure a succession of colorful substitutes. Each brings a lesson; all bring smiles.

“Miss Feesenschneezen Is Ill” is a middle-grade chapter book that entertains.”

David Parmelee’s Miss Feesenschneezen Is Ill began life as a series of little vignettes hidden in his fourth-grade daughter Andrea’s lunchbox to make her laugh at school. Discovering them many years later (his daughter is now completing her BA in film production design) he thought there might be a fun book in them. He wrote the story, which turned out to offer way more twists and turns than he thought (including a whirlwind tour through the U.S. medical system) and and asked illustrator Maria DeCerce to bring the 38 characters to life with her magical pen.

Miss Feesenschneezen is a really fun book for smart kids who like to read and have their own opinions about school. School is the place where young people, going about the work of deciding who they are, are taught by older people who have done that work long ago, but who usually have only a dim memory of what it was like. The worlds collide in a sometimes absurd and comical way. The very, very best teachers, like Miss Feesenschneezen, understand this.

About the Author:
David Parmelee is a father of four from Pennsylvania. An English Literature and Theatre student at Brown, he taught school briefly and now teaches adults, which is far more difficult, and CCD at his parish on Sundays. David is an actor and director in community theatre and is undertaking some playwriting. His first book is The Sea Is a Thief (Sunbury, 2013), a historical novel set on the island of Chincoteague during the Civil War. He also promises more of Miss Feesenschneezen. David loves bicycles and the cycling world, and truly does believe The Cannibal was the best rider of all time.

Excerpt:
“Miss Feesenschneezen is ill,” Principal Armstrong announced. It came as a surprise to us. She didn’t look ill yesterday, when she gave us our assignments for the chapter on Native Americans in her usual calm and quiet end-of-the day voice. She may have coughed once or twice.

She coughed quite a bit more when she called Principal Armstrong the next morning, and sounded like nothing so much as a duck. He could barely recognize her voice. In between wheezes, she explained that she sometimes came down with colds and touches of bronchitis as a girl back in Sullivan County, though this had hardly ever occurred since she moved east. She probably had the same thing again. Her mother used to give her a spoonful of cinnamon and honey, and wrap her throat with a piece of flannel from an old set of footie pajamas. On the flannel, she would drip ten careful drops of eucalyptus oil from a brown glass bottle. Her mother blamed the bronchitis on mold spores in the damp mountain air.

On this day, Miss Feesenschneezen called her family doctor, just to be on the safe side. He recommended she come into the office for a quick visit, even though it didn’t sound serious. His schedule was packed with patients, but he could squeeze her in around lunchtime. She was a patient he never minded seeing.

And so, Principal Armstrong explained, Miss Feesenschneezen would be out for the day.